


Leaky Breaks

by bigfriendlywords



Category: Outlander (TV) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-02-04 03:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigfriendlywords/pseuds/bigfriendlywords
Summary: Wrote this while listening to Manchester Orchestra's Leaky Breaks. It'll probably be a four parter!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Leaky holes and fire escapes will set the evening for tone  
> You and your holy halo started burning eventually just froze  
> Sewn into the carpet just trying to thaw out whatever I know  
> The thermostat it won't go higher not that you or I know

We had managed to find the dingiest and probably only constructed high-rise on the northern coast to dish it out. Sam had suggested the probability of it being haunted and thus abandoned the thought of our cozy cast accommodations off route 66 and insisted we get a room. Assuming alcohol had some play in these change of plans, I hadn’t questioned his motives nor offered any sort of protest.

Because the elevator was nonoperational, the two of us took our time winding up the spiral staircase in an icy silence that left my ears ringing.

Once inside our dingy tomb of a room, Sam immediately set to work muting the ting-ting of a not-so-small leak gathering in a pot with a towel and thrusting open the window leading to the fire escape in attempts to eliminate the musty smell.  
I tapped cautiously on the thermostat. It was a freezing fall night but the pros outweighed the cons with leaving the window open.

“Is this the tone you wanted?” I asked. “Does this look haunted enough for you?”

Sam managed to scrounge up a dozen candles and was busy placing them in various locations.  
“I’m definitely setting the mood for something,” He said, sucking tenderly at his finger where the match burned to its end. 

“Think we can do EMF readings with our phones?”

I gave him a critical look before turning my attention back to the thermostat

“What?” He asked defensively, coming over to gaze over my shoulder at the damned meter.

“Are we really here because of the paranormal?” I inquired, already anticipating a smart remark.

“Of course we are,” He smiled, producing a bottle of whiskey. “Honestly, I thought you’d say no, so…”

I felt my face blush a furious red. That bastard. He’d been attempting to pull me into these traps for the last few months and he was getting more and more successful with it. Turning abruptly from the thermostat, I huffed my way to the open window.

“If you have a question Heughan, it’s best you ask it directly.”

“It’s not that simple,” He responded, running a hand through his hair. “I mean, I think I realized that subconsciously I was searching for the grubbiest hell hole to see if you’d still come but I can’t really explain why.”

I considered him from my perch on the windowsill. He had been acting a bit manic the past month or so, and we had lost our sense of twin speech for a much more disjointed mode of communication. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling anymore. Not to mention the distance. Not just the emotional or communicative but the physical. He seemed to be keeping me three people away at all time. Even now, I noted and registered the small movements he made to increase the distance between us; me on the window, him with his back almost flush with the opposing wall.

“Have you brought me here to murder me?” I suggested in attempts to break the tension.

“I should, what with that shrimp emoji,” He replied brashly, glancing in my direction with a critical look.

“Lest your ego suffer further, I doubt your fans believe you have an insignificant member,” I replied impishly. 

Sam coughed on the sip of whiskey he was attempting to swallow and somehow managed to push himself flatter against the wall.

“That!” I shouted, pointing blatantly at him. “That! What is that?”

“What is what?” he tried, but he knew his façade was a weak one.

“That! Your attempts at melding with the wall!” I continued to point at him. “Your recoiling from me, your sidestepping certain conversations, your sudden need to fulfill the textbook definition of platonic!”

Sam attempted to feign confusion. I finally dropped my accusing finger and shrugged.

“Maybe that’s why I followed you into this god forsaken place; to get my best friend back,” I said. “If it was something I said or did, you can tell me.”

Sam opened and closed his mouth several times before setting it taunt. He poured us both a hefty glass of whisky and slowly approached me.

“My hands are tied,” He said, slipping the glass into my hand. “With everything that’s been happening…” he trailed off wordlessly, turning his back to me and pacing between candles.

“Everything that’s been happening?” I ask. “You mean you and Mackenzie calling it quits?

Sam shook his head, taking a cautious sip of his drink before decidedly downing the damn thing. I mirrored his movement, leaving myself a bit light headed at the sudden introduction of alcohol to my blood stream. By the time I glanced back at Sam, he was nodding his head in a silent “yes”.

“Well, Roland, you’ve lost me.”

“It’s not the separation with Mackenzie,” Sam starts, pouring another. “It’s the fact that I’m no longer seeing Mackenzie.”

“Ah, that clarifies things,” I reply harshly, extending my glass for a refill as well. “You’re acting like a stranger not because you’re no longer with Mackenzie, your acting like a stranger because you’re no longer seeing Mackenzie. Did I get that right? Because—“ 

“You have to do it!” Sam nearly yelled to be heard over my ramblings. “I can’t do it. You have to do it.”

Suddenly silenced, I found myself gabbing a him stupidly.

“Do what?”

“Oh, you fucking know,” Sam says dejectedly, sinking onto the sofa. “Don’t play dumb now, Balfe.”

I went ahead and took another shot of whisky, suddenly feeling very hot and agitated. I paced in front of the open window to cool down knowing that silence ate away at Sam and he’d eventually speak again. And as if on cue…

“I’ve received text messages from five different men and phone calls from three more,” He started, rolling his whisky glass across his forehead. “Asking me if I had perceived any inappropriateness between themselves and coworkers.”

This halted my pacing.

“Since this Weinstein business, it’s been an endless cycle of self doubt,” Sam continued but then paused. 

“You know,” He said softly, glancing up at me. “I had to tell at least four of them that I did find some interactions inappropriate.”

I raised an eyebrow, but ultimately dissolved my mask of agitation for a softer expression.

“But I had to self-evaluate myself too,” He said, now set on avoiding my eyes. “and how I interact with you.”

I wanted to respond but sensed he wasn’t done. He was clenching his jaw in that way he does when he wanted to say something but hadn’t worked out the words. I watched him navigate several phrases, before shaking his head determinedly and looking at me directly.

“So I can’t do it,” he said with a stronger voice. “You have to do it.”

In the moment, I wasn’t sure what he meant. Yet, I felt my heel kick off my perch on the windowsill and walk resolutely toward him as if direction was all I needed. He looked up at me from under those blonde lashes with those sparking blue eyes and was allowed a momentary expression of confusion before I had his face cupped in my hands.

Leaving him only a moment to inhale sharply, I kissed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And I was drinking heavily  
> I burst into your bedroom belligerently  
> Asked her if she's done a thing  
> Like stepping out and making a scene  
> So foolishly I was apathetic so I blamed your family and Never mended it

Perhaps a follow-up question was an inappropriate response to a kiss. And though, yes, a kiss traditionally could be perceived as consent, I am a man of the 21st century and do require two-step authentication with such matters. Cait hadn’t anticipated this, as she pulled back and hovered over my lips, waiting for me to bridge the gap and kiss her back. My lips did move, though not in the way either one of us expected. They formed words I didn’t even give my tongue permission to articulate.

“I’m distracted,” We both heard me say.

Cait sat back on her heels as I let out a strangled "ugh" that I couldn't put words to. 

"You're distracted?" She asked incredulously, falling over on to the couch. I made a brash movement to grab her hand to which she instantly recoiled. That hurt more than what I had expected so I blurred the pain by taking a generous swig of whisky. That, apparently, was the last straw. Cait stood abruptly and shrugged on her coat.

"Where are you going?" Was all I could manage to ask, half standing to join her.

"The bar in the basement," She said hotly.

"There's a bar in the..."

But she was already out the door and clearly not extending an invitation. 

 

 

I settled into my spot on the sofa and took another sip from my bottle. This was exactly what I didn't want to happen but it was hard to argue it was anyone's fault but mine. 

"I'm distracted?" I said aloud again, hating the way the way it sounded. It, of course, is not what I meant but if I couldn't articulate that to myself, who's to believe me? Two more sips and I was prostrate on the floor, staring at the water stains above and attempting to slow my heart rate. I felt myself starting to slip into a panic but eased myself into a cycle of slow and even breaths, ignoring the way my vision blurred whether from the alcohol or unshed tears. 

Feeling suddenly trapped, I started to hastily pull at my shoe laces to free my feet as if this was an appropriate solution. 

"I'm fucking distracted?!" I nearly yelled, yanking a shoe free and throwing it across the room. All the various scripts I had rehearsed in preparation for this very moment and I went with ‘I’m distracted’? I seemed to remember rehearsing a much more eloquent confession of love by candlelight, complete with open vulnerability and earnest revelations. 

“I guess that’s what you get for practicing how to be earnest,” I muttered, taking three small sips in quick succession. Cait and I were no strangers to disregarded scripts. Half of our choreographed scenes involving any degree of intimacy dissolved into something else entirely. But the ad-lib and the improvisation; they were always better. This wasn't better. I took one more sip before hoisting myself up to my feet for some panicked pacing. The sudden altitude change in tandem with my blood alcohol content left my head spinning and I solved that too with a draw from my bottle.

I used to throw these intense tantrums as a child. Language and clear thought would leave me and I'd be left with this raw energy that vibrated and shook within me and left me buzzing within my own bones. I was angry about my father and felt within me a great want for something I could not obtain. This was a familiar feeling; there being something or someone I could not make want me.

But that wasn't true at all. She did want me. 

I let this be my mantra as I paced the dusty floor between rows of candles until the buzzing stopped. Last thing I remembered was laying my head down on the stiff couch and debating whether or not to go retrieve Caitriona from the bar below. Knowing Cait, it would be an insult.

 

 

I did wake, then, when she attempted to slip through the door unheard and undetected. That was laughable since she had also probably spent a few solid hours at the bottom of a bottle. She accidentally kicked the door and it's knob knocked against the plaster behind it. 

I sat up, too raw to pretend to be asleep for her sake. 

"And where have you been?" I said disapprovingly, giving her a critical up-and-down. 

I predicted this would push some buttons but didn't anticipate her chunking her purse at my head. 

"Drunk and making a scene?" I said accusingly, ducking my head to avoid whatever may come next.

"Making a scene?" She nearly shrieked, kicking off her pumps. I was thankful those weren't in the pool of things she'd consider throwing. "Why? Why do you care? Would it be distracting? Would you be distracted?"

"Cait, I--" 

"And what exactly distracted you from following me down to the bar and explaining yourself like an adult?" She asked, furiously pulling at her hair in attempts to unbraid it. 

"I was giving you space."

"Giving me space?" She asked incredulously. "Giving me space to what? Process the rejection?"

"I don't like this thing where you repeat what I said in the form of hysterical question and then follow it up with more ridiculous questions."

"Well, I don't like you," She said, resembling a toddler so much that I almost smiled. 

"Maybe we've both been drinking and we should revisit this in the morning," I suggested, grabbing the nearest candle and blowing it out. 

"Well fuck me and the vodka redbull I just downed," Cait shouted, grabbing a candle in turn and extinguishing it with a violent blow. 

"Vodka redbull? Who are you?"

I was not only dealing with a drunk Balfe; I was dealing with an over-caffeinated Balfe.

"Roland, you lost all teasing privileges the moment you greeted my kiss with the perfect impersonation of a deer in headlights. My god, you should write, direct, and star in a Bambi biopic with that face you gave me."

Perhaps because my silence unnerved her, she continued to ramble; grabbing candles and extinguishing them an at alarming rate that faded us into a growing darkness. 

"...and the games we've been playing. Were they just to fuck with me? Because that's cruel. There isn't a better word for it. it's cruel and..." 

She reached the last candle and paused to bring it to her lips. I took this fleeting moment to grab her hand, candle and all. Her eyes snapped up to mine where I saw why she was so eager to plunge us into darkness. All it took was one blink and the tears started to line her face.

“No, no,” I whispered. “No, I love you.”

Having finally said it, I followed it up with a long release of breath that did, finally, extinguish the last light the room held.


End file.
